WAP24 September Edition Lead walker and co-curator: Antonia Aitken based in lutruwita /Tasmania, Australia since 2014.
My creative research practice is informed by critical place theory, walking, and a material knowledge of printmaking and drawing. My work considers walking and drawing based methodologies as forms of critical inquiry and dialogue with place. As a settler-descendent living in Australia, the challenge of how to address the complexities of walking unceded territories is a fundamental question. How can walking enable re-conceptualisations of place that nurture ethical relations? I am a recognised tertiary educator and have taught Printmaking, Drawing and Critical Practices at the University of Tasmania for the past ten years. My work is held in significant public collections, and I have exhibited and undertaken residencies nationally and internationally.
PROPOSED WORK
WAP2023 presented me with an opportunity to connect with Björkö and the surrounding islands and importantly with the artist community that formed. Each day I engaged in looped walks from the studio - into the surrounding environment – the forests, rivers, and coastlines. This process grounded me in place as I engaged through my senses in a process embodied wayfinding. The results of these walks were a series of what I have termed ‘relational gestures’ – creative responses to the place, people, materials, and ideas I was walking with. Some of the results were drawn, written, spoken, performed, collaborative and ephemeral. These are documented on the WAP 23 Research Catalogue, which can be found here.
Archipelagos present one with an opportunity to examine what it means to be both autonomous and in-relation; to coexist locally and globally. Archipelagic models of thinking and practice aim to shift dominant Western protectionist ideas of ‘singularity’, ‘isolation’, and ‘individualism’ towards broader understandings of islands as inter-related constellations.[1] Where the liquid space between islands is an active space which provides passageways and linkages between places and people.
These ideas became very present for me during the residency as I responded to the ecology of both the artist studio and the northern archipelago. I am interested in how one brings their individual practices into relation with others (be that place, artists, more-than-human and materials) and how this exchange could be conceptualised through the lens of archipelagic thinking. A return visit to BKN in 2024 would present an opportunity for me to explore this through writing, expanded drawing practice and performative or relational gestures.
[1] Stratford, Elaine; Baldacchino, G; McMahon, E; Farbotko, C; Harwood, A (2011). Envisioning the Archipelago. University Of Tasmania. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/102.100.100/583008, Accessed 11 September 2023.
a forest petition – voicing the forest
anastomosis
-in anatomy, "union or intercommunication of the vessels of one system with those of another"
What is it to create as an act of witnessing and voicing for another?
During the residency I am enacting a series of daily drawing prompts or briefs which aim to heighten my sense of awareness to the forest.
I am walking daily and gathering elements of the forest to draw with in the studio onto a set of pages and scrolls, as I attempt to write a letter or score to and for the forest. Each collected resource / object/ being represents a layer and interlocking part of the forest ecosystem - from moss and fungi to the blueberry and lingon berries, to the tall pines and birch trees. Their unique forms each inform a set of marks or signatures drawn through haptic gestures and shadow projections.
Petition (n).
Petiocioun 'a supplication or prayer'
request for change
'Petitions', Karen O'Brien writes, 'disrupt and contest normative arrangements - open up the way for a renegotiation and consequent restructuring of a societies legislative procedure'.
(Petitioning for Land, 2020)
They are processes of resistance - negotiation, intervention, disruption.
I draw with shadows: at 1:1 scale
shadows present themselves when the projection of light is blocked by the body being drawn
impermanent and temporal
shifting with the moving earth, dissolving with the clouds
instruction: each day forest offerings will be traced onto the documents housed in the studio
offerings will be laid upon the paper and then traced when the sun projects its light onto the page
pen and ink will be the predominant tool for mark making and articulation of the message
possible steps in creating a petition:
1. identify the statement of purpose - an intention and request for change
2. gather together - unite, assemble, collect
- an assembly of bodies, people, voices
individual & collective identities - signifying the want for recognition, visibility and change
3. delivery of petition - present, speak, hand over the document for consideration
notes
"Most of Europe’s natural ecosystems have been lost over the centuries. However, a sizeable amount of natural old forest still exists, especially in the north. These “old-growth” forests are exceptionally valuable as they tend to host more species, store more carbon, and are more resilient to environmental change.
Many of these forests are found in Sweden, part of the belt of boreal forests that circle the world through Canada, Scandinavia and Russia. But after researching these last relics of natural forest we have found they are being cleared rapidly – at a rate faster even than the Amazon rainforest."
Cited in Anders Ahlström; Pep Canadell,'Sweden has vast ‘old growth’ forests – but they are being chopped down faster than the Amazon', published in The Conversation, 13 March 2024.
"Boreal forests are characterized by cool climate and low availability of nutrients, especially nitrogen (Tamm 1991), and contain approximately half of the global forest carbon pool in a third of the earth's forested area (Dixon et al. 1994)."
Cited in Thomas B. Hasper et al, 'Water use by Swedish boreal forests in a changing climate' published in Functional Ecology, 2016.
Deforestation is one of the many forms of ecocide that we are witnessing across the globe. In order to meet the growing demand for timber and arable land we are seeing unregulated clear felling on an unprecedented scale. These acts of removal and replacement are destroying biological diversity, and leading to the displacement and extinction of species. These violent actions threaten the survival of Earth’s multi-species community through their removal of vital habitat, distabilisation of balanced systems and contribution to global warming. Distressed by these realities and witnessing the clear felling of old growth forests at home in lutruwita/Tasmania and here in Sweden, I have begun to consider how I voice for the forest. How do acts of making connect us intimately - invite relation - so one might feel a sense of entanglement, urgency and responsibility to speak for these more-than-human communities with whom we depend and share this existence.
instruction: each day for the week leading up to my departure I will take a paper scroll for a walk into the environment beyond the house/studio to draw with
the paper will be positioned to capture the projected shadows in the forest and and then traced onto the page
pen and ink will be the predominant tool for mark making and articulation of the message
thinking in action - reflections on the inside (studio) and outside (forest) making spaces.
As this project develops i have many questions about drawing as a process of recording what is perceived through hapticity - i touch the forests with my sensory receptors in my hands, eyes, nose, ears - it enables a close connection and observation with what is being drawn - i shift my body to navigate and work with the ground, the drawing matrix and the tools i draw with.
This negotiation also happens in the studio - but the more controlled environment (climate and wind controlled, even ground, defined edges, flat surfaces, furniture) changes the relationship to my drawing - the way i sit and move around the drawing - the ink ditribution tends to be more even, the line more homogenous, the paper less creased.
I find this observation of process is becoming a central focus of the work. How does the interplay between studio and outside studio operate - how does my relationship to my subject, to my sense of relation with 'place' (a term i use to encompass the land, seas and skies - the human and more-than-human) change when I work it directly and indirectly - through touch (including sight), memory, imagination.
i am sleeping with my work - i fall asleep with the moon projecting light onto the pages - framed by window architraves - i wake at dawn to see it revealed again in an even illumination - by 8:30am the sunlight begins to project light onto the western wall, across pinned drawings - again the shadows of the school architecture reveals itself - by 9am onto the floor - touching the drawings laid on the ground.
